I'm diving deep in design. I've read through the first exercises of this part and at the same time am reading 'The Photographer's Eye', which gives even more information about the concepts of where to put subjects in a frame and how it influences the way an image is perceived. It's a completely new area for me and I'm starting to be more and more conscious of the decisions photographers and illustrators make when placing a subject in a frame. I watched the movie 'Despicable Me' and just can't simply enjoy the story, there are lines, points, implied triangles everywhere!

It's a good learning curve. I used to look at photographs and be really stunned by how something simple can become an object of art just be the way it was framed. Now I'm learning about the principles behind this beauty and am excited that I can start to put these same principles into practice.

So here's the first exercise: Positioning a single point in a frame. I have doubted whether this setting was right, since there is a lot of movement on the sides of the frame, but decided that it actually accentuates the influence of the position of the main point even more. An other issue is that the main point consists of three subjects. But since they are close together all the time, I consider them as one point.

Main point in the middle

With the point in the middle, the eye is immediately drawn to the subject and not really stimulated to look at other details of the picture. Even though there is movement on the sides because of the water and little stream towards the sea, my eyes just stay in the middle. I understand why this position is the most static. It's already different when the main point is a bit off the middle:

Right off the middle

In this image the eyes are forced to moved across the picture starting in the left bottom corner and diagonally going to the upper right. This line is accentuated by the stream of water, but I think that without it, there is still more dynamic. in the picture than with the point in the center

Close to the edge

An other one close to edge, with less details on the sides.

These are my most favorites picture of the series. Looking at it now, in the upper one you might say that there is an other point, with the water circle on the right, but the effect of putting the main point close to the edge is still very obvious. There is a lot of dynamic in the pictures with diagonal lines going from the bottom up to the opposite side of the image. With the literal movement of the waves on the sides the main point is even more accentuated.

This part of the course is really making me aware of how I look at images and the order in which I look at the points in it. Now the next exercise was a real challenge!